


Purple Hawke Down

by Hatsepsut



Series: Not Your Happy Ending [10]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Blood Magic, F/M, Madness, Major character death - Freeform, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-14
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-15 00:28:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8034961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hatsepsut/pseuds/Hatsepsut
Summary: A long time ago, a reader ( Doxophobic was the name, I think) asked me to write a fic where Hawke died during the battle with the Arishok. I started it, but was unable to finish it, for the longest time. Until now, and I do hope my reader is still around and might come across it. So...this turns a little morbid after a point, be warned.





	Purple Hawke Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Doxophobic](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Doxophobic).



               

The Arishok’s body  was surrounded by his Qunari followers; silently they picked him up and walked out the door. Until that moment, the room had been eerily silent, but now murmurs and whispers started, the nobles looking at each other with shocked eyes, still unsure they were safe.

Meredith and Orsino burst into the room, and came to an abrupt halt at the sight of the elf holding Hawke’s body, while a pool of blood slowly spread around her.

Anders was still running his hands over her, desperately searching for a pulse, for any sign of breath, of life.

Fenris' eyes- so green, so intense- never left the healer's face as he bent over Hawke’s immobile body. His breath caught at the thinning of the mage's lips, the tears that suddenly made his amber eyes luminous.   
  
"She is..."  
  
Fenris clutched Hawke even tighter to his chest, as if trying to protect it from the inevitable words that were going to tumble out of Anders' mouth, as if he believed that if the words didn't reach her it couldn’t be true. "Do not say it!"  
  
"...dead."  
  
He bent his head over her lifeless body and wept, silently sobbing while the nobles cheered and rejoiced at having been saved, ignoring the woman who had just died to save them.

* * *

Varric heaved another sigh and dragged his feet through the empty mansion. Bodahn was crying silently as he packed clothes and weapons in a chest, his dim-witted son watching on with a bewildered, confused expression.

“Such a shame,” the dwarven manservant mumbled for the hundredth time. “Such a waste.”

Varric sighed again. It seemed it was all he was able to do lately. The world had lost some of its sparkle since the day they had surrendered Hawke’s body to her pyre, the whole city in attendance. He could still remember how Sebastian’s voice had broken while reciting the solemn, empty words of the funeral service. He could still remember how that mabari of hers had howled as the flames devoured her body, chilling the blood of everyone present.

The beast had disappeared afterwards, and no one had seen him since.

He had never imagined to see Aveline crying, but the Guard Captain had surprised him, breaking down and sobbing at her friend’s loss. He had expected Anders to break down, but the blond healer had surprised him too; standing there, his eyes red and bloodshot, he had stiffened his lip and endured, grieving the woman he had always loved, who had loved someone else.

His own self had surprised Varric that day; he had expected himself to bounce right up, crack a joke about Hawke, maybe tell a story that showed the world what an extraordinary woman she had been; but he had lost his words. For the first time in his life Varric had had nothing to say.

Except maybe shit, Hawke. _Shit_.

Sighing, he ran a finger through the dust that had already blanketed her desk; they needed to pack everything, settle her accounts, and send any personal items to Bethany.

Orana was sniffling in the corner, still inconsolable, breaking everybody’s heart with her grief. Varric had tried to make her eat at first, but eventually he had given up.

He couldn’t bring himself to care about much of anything anymore.

As the days passed, and her absence solidified, the world lost some of its light, the days became a chore, laughter and joy faded and dimmed.

She had been the best of them, the glue that had held them all together with her quicksilver tongue and her bright smile, her mercurial temper and the depth of her caring for all of them. Now that she was gone, they were breaking apart at the seams.

He wandered away from the servants, not wanting anyone to see his eyes flood with tears, and headed to the kitchen.

Well, that was a big mistake. Her presence was even more pronounced in here, her touch evident in everything that Varric saw. He leafed through her cookbook, still open on the counter. Hawke loved to cook. She had been in this here kitchen, poring over her recipes, when Isabela and Aveline had both burst in, demanding her help that fateful day.

He blinked to clear the fog in his eyes and his eyes fell on the notes scribbled at the edge of the page. _Varric’s favourite_ , she had written next to a cookie recipe. _No cinnamon, though_ , she had jolted in her neat penmanship. _It makes him sneeze_. And a little smiley face.

Varric sat heavily on a chair, hid his head in his hands and cried for his lost friend.

* * *

Isabela tossed the empty bottle against the wall and blindly reached for another one. She opened it without even bothering with the cork; she just smashed the neck against the desk and brought it to her mouth.

Vaguely, she realised her lips were getting shredded on the jagged glass, but she didn't care. She tossed that bottle too, the half drank whiskey staining the wall and filing the room with the acrid smell of bad alcohol.

Good. That was good. She couldn’t smell her own desperation now; she couldn’t taste the bitterness of her own guilt.

Her arms hang limply between her knees as she slumped forward. Getting drunk didn't help, getting fucked by anything on two legs didn't either. She had tried. She had tried burying her grief in pleasure, she had the bruises to prove it. But it hadn't worked.  She hadn't been able to forget, she hadn't been able to get Hawke out of her mind.

Why did the stupid bitch have to go and defend her like that? She could have handed her over to the Qunari. She would have resented it, but she’d have found a way to escape. Why did she have to go and throw her life away on a lying, back-stabbing whore like her?

Anger flooded her. Damn her and her big, stupid, fucking bleeding heart! Fuck her and her caring! She’d never asked for friendship, she’d never wanted ties. Damn her! Why did she have to go and stand by her? Didn't she know she wasn’t worth it?

A whimper escaped her and she searched frantically for another bottle. If she started crying, she’d never stop.

Vaguely, she wondered if she was crying for Hawke or herself; she’d just lost her only friend, and damn her eyes, she had never claimed not to be a selfish bitch. She’d even told Hawke- she’d warned her.

Isabela squeezed her eyes shut tightly, and brought a hand to her mouth, trying to stifle the cry that wanted to escape her.

Why, damn it, Hawke, why?

* * *

Aveline shook her head at the reports of more dead bodies being found, and pillaging and looting in the poorer parts of town. Ever since Hawke had...passed, chaos had erupted in the city.

She hated to admit it, but she’d never realised how much Hawke had helped keep the city safe, taking care of the criminal elements that roamed the streets at night.

She sighed and rubbed a hand against her forehead. The city was going to crumble to the Void. Mages and templars were at each other’s throats. Hawke’s sacrifice was used by the mages to make the yoke that Meredith had placed around their necks loosen up. They claimed that if mages were allowed to be a more active part of society, more people like Hawke could prove their worth.

They were trying to turn her best friend into a martyr, a symbol, and that made her sick.

But, it was in vain; Meredith was adamant. One good mage didn't mean that they had to be less vigilant. She saw blood mages and abominations everywhere. There was now no Viscount to keep the careful balance between them anymore, and Elthina’s method was to let the Maker sort the whole mess out.

Aveline scoffed at the thought. As if the Maker cared. Had he cared even a little about what might happen to this city, he wouldn’t have allowed Hawke to die.

It was still hard to believe. Hawke was dead. She had been the best of them, and now she was dead. That vibrant, colourful light of hers- snuffed out like a candle in the storm. Her laughter- that girly, bubbly laughter of hers, silenced forever. Her grey eyes, that changed colour according to her mood, silver when she was happy, a deep stormy grey when she was upset – closed forever.

She rubbed a hand across her midriff. The baby she was carrying would never get to know Hawke, the woman who had helped her parents get together.

She would name the child Marian if it was a girl. It was the least she could do.

Tears came to her eyes, but she blinked them away. How she wished her friend was here right now, to share her joy, to smile that crooked, lopsided smile at her and tease her in that infuriating way of hers. How she wished...

But wishes were powerless, useless things. She had a job to do and she owed to Hawke to do it to the best of her abilities.

Damn it, though...she missed Hawke.

* * *

 

Merrill knocked on the door, tilted her head to the side to listen, then scrounged up her pretty face when no sound came from the huge dilapidated mansion. She sighed and left the basket of bread and fruit she had been carrying outside the door.

Fenris had been holed up in there for days now, ever since Hawke’s funeral service had finished. He hadn't cried, hadn’t said anything. He had broken down and cried over her body while they were still in the Keep, silent, heart-breaking sobs wracking his body, but after that, he hadn't said a word. He’d lowered his head and looked at none of them in the eyes. Varric had mumbled to him that it wasn’t his fault and he shouldn’t blame himself- he’d just raised his head and looked at him, blinking as if the words were in an alien tongue. She’d never seen such grief, such sorrow in another person’s eyes before.

When Sebastian held out the urn with Hawke’s ashes they’d all stood stock still, looking at the brass pot that contained their friend’s remains. Fenris had stepped forward and taken it in his hands, then lowered his head and walked away. No one had seen him since.

Merrill was worried for him. She was worried for all of them. Anders had barely slept, the last time he had seen him he had a half-crazed look in his eyes and dark circles around them. He’d looked haggard; dirty, his beard longer and his hair mussed as if he had tried to pull out tufts of it at some point.

“I wasn’t able to save her,” he had mumbled. “She slipped through my fingers. I should cut them off, one by one.”

She was scared for him. Everybody had known that Anders had been deeply, desperately in love with Hawke and it seemed now that her loss had hit him especially hard. She was scared for him, for the fact that his grief had made a mind already burdened by Justice’s unnatural presence spin out of control. She was scared out of her mind for Fenris, for Isabela, for Varric that did nothing but sigh and brood.

Isabela...she was missing. No one knew where she was. “Good riddance,” Varric had mumbled when Merrill went to ask for his help to locate the pirate. “I hope she’s at the bottom of some ocean somewhere.”

Merrill didn't know what to do, who to try to help first. They were all wallowing in guilt and anger and self-pity, so caught up in their own personal torment of grief that they didn't realise that they were a family, that Hawke had made them a family, and that they had each other to lean on.

Her sense of solidarity was strong, just as in every Dalish, and she ached to see the members of her family, her clan, drift away like this, and get lost in their own personal sorrow.

She stopped outside the Amell estate, now locked, the windows boarded up. A small flower was pushing through the cracked stone of the threshold, struggling to reach the light, valiantly pushing upwards through the hard stone.

Merrill looked at it for the longest time; it reminded her of Hawke. So strong and so fragile. So beautiful. So determined to push herself upwards, to rise above everything that fate had thrown her, to raise her head to the sun and blossom. She smiled at the little flower, then approached it and carefully chipped away some of the stone that was choking it.

If life could bloom among the stone, then hope could bloom in grief. She would find a way to make Hawke’s sacrifice something they would honour, something they would grieve over but not let pull them under.

This flower would wilt soon; it would be gone, just like Hawke. They should enjoy it while they had it- smell its fragrance, enjoy its colour, celebrate its life.

She smiled a wobbly, dejected grin amidst the tears that ran down her face without her realising it. She wouldn’t give up. Somehow, she would find a way to help her friends; Hawke would have wanted nothing less.

* * *

A man holding a weeping child knocked on the door of the ramshackle clinic; the lantern wasn’t lit, as it hadn't been for days, but his son was burning up and the healer had never refused anyone his help.

The door swung violently open and the healer stepped out, looking like all the demons in the Fade were after him. “WHAT?” he bellowed. “What is it with you people? Can’t you see that the lantern is not lit? Leave me alone!”

And he banged the door on the man’s face, ignoring the wailing child.

The man took one step back, trembling with fear. Those eyes- they were rimmed with red, and fogged with madness. The mage had cracked. He rocked the child to soothe him then timidly knocked again. No answer came from inside.

“Please, Serah,” he whimpered. “I’m begging you. I have lost three children already and this is my youngest. My last one.”

Still no answer.

“Healer!” the man was getting desperate now, as the child started wheezing and turning a bluish colour, clearly struggling to breathe. “Please help us! You are all we have! Please!”

The door slowly creaked open.

“Come in,” a voice, much calmer now, instructed. The man stepped into the gloom of the clinic, noticing the stale smell of the air and the mess; things were tossed around haphazardly and books littered every area -the floors, the benches, the tables- tossed on their back, pages open.

The mage stepped out of a smaller room at the back, wiping his hands. “Put the child on that table over there,” he instructed the man who stood to the side with hope and fear in his eyes as the mage healed his son.

He thanked the mage afterwards, picked his son up to go, but he couldn’t leave like this. He had to offer...something.

“Serah,” he murmured. “Are you feeling alright? Is there something I can do?”

The mage’s shoulders hunched. “Tell me,” he   mumbled. “Your children, the ones that died....how far would you go to bring them back?”

The man regarded the healer with pity and sympathy is his eyes. It was no secret that the mage had been in love with the Saviour of Kirkwall, the young woman that had died battling the Arishok. He wanted to tell him that it was just grief that was controlling him now, but it would pass, it would lessen. He would never really forget, but life went on; it gave you no choice.

But he couldn’t find the words to say all that; instead he tightened his lips and replied “To the ends of the Void.”

Anders’ eyes lit up. “Yes...yes...to the ends of the Void.”

The man left the clinic, his recovered child tucked tightly against his chest, with the sickening feeling that his answer had been the wrong one.

* * *

Sebastian prayed once more; not that it helped. Once, the rolling poetry of the Chant would have eased his soul, but now...it was just words.

He got up from the pew he had been kneeling on and swiftly made it to the door, strapping his bow on his back as he went.

Merrill had come to see him, fearlessly strolling into the Chantry like she wasn’t a blood mage and a Dalish, and demanded his help.

Fenris. They had to check on Fenris.

He walked to the mansion with swift, long strides, determined and angry. The damned elf had caused Hawke’s end. He had suggested that duel, he had stood on the side and calmly pitted her against that behemoth. And he was doing what now? Wallowing in guilt? Well, he should!

But still, the Dalish elf had made him promise he would go see him.

He knocked on the door, and when he got no answer he just kicked the door down and stormed inside. He took to the stairs two steps at the time and banged on the door of the room the elf usually slept in.

“Fenris!” he shouted. “Open up!”

When no answer came, Sebastian just fiddled with the lock for a while then casually stepped inside. He was still furious with the elf, but after four days, he felt at least partially controlled to talk to him and not kill him on sight.

 Sebastian froze on the spot; he took two deep breaths then approached the elf.

“Oh...Fenris,” he touched the other man’s shoulder. “You fool. What did you do?”

He touched one finger to the nearly flailed skin of the half naked warrior. It was still bleeding, whatever it was he had done, his skin a mass of red welts and angry slashes; his arms, his chest, his face.

Hawke’s urn was cradled against his chest.

“You fool. You stupid, blighted idiot. You loved her, you fucked-up excuse of man. Why did you do that? Why did you make her fight that beast?” Sebastian mumbled, trying to ease the urn from between his arms.

One eye cracked open.

“Because I was sure she could win,” the elf mumbled, then closed his eyes again and moaned.  Carefully he let the urn on the table in front of them, laying a soft kiss on its surface before turning to the ex-prince. “Because she was the best. She was strong, powerful, brave. Free.  Everything I ever wished I could be. And she’s dead, because of me.”

Sebastian huffed. “Is your name Arishok?” At the elf’s negative nod he scoffed again. “Then it wasn’t you that killed her.”

He helped the elf to his feet and winced at the extent of his wounds. “Did you do this?” he softly asked.

The warrior just raised his gauntleted hands to the ex-prince and showed him the bloodied tips, sharp as knives.

“Did it help?” the ex-prince asked casually as he found a clean rag and dipped it in a basin of water before handing it to Fenris.

“No.” The elven warrior started wiping himself, clearing away the blood; “No, it didn't. Nothing helps.”

“She would have been horrified to see you like this.”

Fenris bowed his head. “I know.”

“She would have cuffed you and called you a fool.”

“I know.”

“She would...”

“ENOUGH!” Fenris bellowed, interrupting Sebastian. “Enough with what she would have done! She isn’t here! There’s nothing...” his voice broke, “...she can do anymore.”

Sebastian’s face crumbled and tears made his cerulean eyes glisten. “You loved her.” It wasn’t a question, and his voice rang out sure and filled with pity.

Fenris’ eyes stayed focused on his face, then he nodded in acknowledgement. “You loved her as well.”

Again, it was not a question.

Sebastian nodded, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “Who didn't love her? Who didn't want her? And you had her, and let her go. Moron.”

Fenris sat heavily down on his chair again and hit his face in his hands. “One night. Just one night.”

“Moron.”

Silence was his only answer, and he swiped the tears from his face, trying to hold on to his anger. But the sight of the elf, so broken and laden with guilt, was already chipping away at it.

He sat heavily on a chair too, and grabbed a half empty bottle. Before they knew it, they were both drinking and talking about her, and despite their grief, or even because of it, even laughing at some points at the outrageous things she had done and said.

They didn't speak of it later, they just got up and each went his separate way; Sebastian back to the Chantry, to be drilled about why his clothes had blood stains on them, and Fenris to the Hanged Man, to talk to Varric about securing him passage out of Kirkwall.

* * *

Fenris’ farewell ‘party’ was a sombre, sad event. Varric had arranged for one last night of drinking and gambling, one last night of sitting around the table in his suite, like they did almost daily when Hawke was alive.

Aveline couldn’t drink, of course, and Sebastian rarely indulged, and Merrill couldn’t hold her liquor very well. Isabela was still nowhere to be seen, and Anders shone by his absence.

“Here’s to the broodiest, most stubborn, most opinionated of all the pointy eared bastards that walked this continent! Here’s to you, Prince of Moping!” Varric raised his mug, his eyes glinting.

“Here, here...” Sebastian mock-saluted. “Hawke sure knew how to pick them.”

Aveline just raised her glass of water and took a sip.

“It wasn’t his fault,” Merrill mumbled, gaining a surprised look from Fenris. “None of it was his fault. Hawke would have gone up against that beast anyway. As for what happened between them,” she faced Fenris’ sudden growl with defiance in her eyes, “Hawke understood. She told me once that she would wait for you, that you were worth waiting for. I don’t know if does any good for you to hear this now, but I think she would like you to know...wouldn’t she?”

A wide-eyed look of shock made Fenris’ face look stricken for a second before he looked away with a small blush on his high cheeks. Silence reigned as all the people around the room waited for his answer. He cleared his throat twice.

“She would. Thank you.”

Merrill just nodded. “And you!” she turned to Varric. “You, sitting there, moping, sighing and drinking!” Fire was burning in her eyes. “Hawke would have called you a fool ten times over! She’d laugh at you and tell you to sit down and make up some ridiculous tale about her and...and...” she threw her arms in the air. She sighed, her anger deflating. “She’d ask you to remember her, Varric, and laugh at her adventures, and be her friend and tell tales about her.”

Varric bit his lip. “She would, wouldn’t she? Damned little fool would’ve had a ball if I did _just_ that.”

Merrill turned to Sebastian who just smiled gently at her. “What would she have me do, little Dalish?” he asked, his eyes soft. “It seems that all of us claimed to love her, but that none of knew her as well as you did.”

“She’d want you to go back to your city, and be a Prince, and stop waffling about. She’d want you to be a good ruler, and be happy and maybe name your first daughter after her.”

Sebastian nodded solemnly. “It will be done, then.”

Aveline raised her glass. “To Hawke,” she said, her voice choked. “The best among us. And Sebastian, you can’t name your first daughter after her. The name’s taken,” she said with a slight, bitter-sweet smile, laying her hand on her belly.

Congratulations went about, which Aveline dismissed with a wave of her hand. Just then the door burst open and Anders stumbled into the room.

Fenris half-rose on his seat, his markings glowing. Varric cursed and grabbed Bianca, while Sebastian looked to the blond healer with horror and surprise making his blue eyes as wide as saucers.

The mage was covered in dried blood, and shaking like a leaf. His eyes –bloodshot, shining with something akin to madness- were wild and triumphant at the same time.

“Blood magic. Powerful blood magic,” Merrill cringed, then struggled to draw breath. “What have you done? Creators, Anders, what have you done?”

 Anders took one step forward and a smile that sent chills of fear and horror down everyone’s spines lit up his face. There was nothing but insanity in that smile, nothing but the ramblings of a broken mind.

“I have defeated death,” he said, making the temperature in the room fall even lower.

“Shit.” Varric mumbled.

“I have touched...”

“If he says the face of the Maker,” Varric hissed, cocking a shot, “I’m dropping him.”

Aveline drew her sword and stepped forward, between Varric and Anders. She grasped the mage by the shoulder, wincing slightly at the blood coating the feathers of his coat. Looking deep into the mage’s eyes, she asked in a soft but commanding voice, “What did you do, Anders?”

Her tone seemed to wake Anders up from the trance like state he had fallen into. For a moment he seemed to be his old self. “I brought Hawke back, what else?” he asked as if it were the most logical thing in the world.

 Fenris growled. “Hawke is dead.”

“I defeated death...” Anders started again, his eyes once more taking that otherworldly, far-away look.

“Oh, please, let me drop him like a sack of potatoes,” Varric raised his voice. Fenris turned to look at the dwarf and realised with a jolt of surprise that the usually unshakable dwarf was shaking like a leaf, visibly pale, his eyes terrified. “Don’t you see what he’s done?” Varric closed his eyes tight, then shivered from head to toes with revulsion. “Doesn’t any of you remember Quentin?”

Time ground to a halt, screeching as it did so.

Shocked faces looked to each other, horror and revolt making each of them feel as if a blanket of ice had covered the entire room.

It was Merrill that stepped forward first, remarkably. She removed Aveline’s hand from where it had remained forgotten, clutched on Anders’ blood-soaked shoulder, then she hissed to the red-haired Guard Captain to step back.

“Don’t touch him, Aveline,” she just said, her face twisted in a mask of disgust and anger.

A quick spell, something none of them had seen before and Anders crumbled to their feet, making everyone gasp.

“Like a sack of potatoes,” Varric mumbled. “Maker be praised.”

“Call the templars,” Sebastian commanded in a voice that was almost unrecognisable. “He’s beyond our help. He has cracked. A swift death is all we can offer him.”

Merrill turned to them all, her back stiff was tension and her eyes huge with horror. That’s when they all heard what she was already hearing, what had already made her blood run cold.

The sound of feet shuffling heavily in the corridor outside.

A pained moan escaped Fenris, a sound of utter misery.

“Is that...?” Varric gulped down. “Someone tell me that’s the Talkative Man, wearing a pair of slippers too big for his feet.”

No one answered, all of them stiff with fear and horror as the sound of the shuffling feet came closer.

Fenris took one last look around the room, his face set in stone.

“I’ll...take care of it,” he said.

It was like a gust of icy wind had suddenly burst into the room. Varric look stricken, clearly lost for words for the first time in his life, and Merrill had turned green while Aveline placed a hand on her mouth to hold in the heaving, gagging sound she involuntarily made.

Sebastian locked eyes with Fenris, his cerulean gaze shaded with misery and shock. The shuffling steps came closer; somewhere, down the corridor, someone screamed. They all realised that other than that lone scream of abject horror, the Hanged Man had grown unnaturally, eerily quiet. “Be...quick,” he nodded to the elf. “Don’t let her suffer.”

Fenris just nodded, then turned on his heel, without another word. His face had closed down, not a single emotion visible on it, nothing but determination and a simmering, ruthless well of anger.

Anders stirred on the floor and Sebastian felt no qualm to mercilessly kick him in the ribs. Nobody intervened, though Merrill cringed, all of them listening intently.

There was a voice, a soft, hoarse voice, a pleading murmur; then a gurgled breath and a gasp, and the heavy thud of a body dropping to the floor.

And then Fenris started howling- there was no other way to describe it, that long, tormented wail of misery, of loss, of the pain the stoic elf was feeling at having to see the woman he loved dead twice.

Varric wiped his face, then grasped Sebastian’s arm as he was moving towards the door. The cries of anguish had quieted down to whimpering groans, and Varric exchanged a knowing look with the ex-prince.

“Let him,” Varric said. “Let him grieve.”

The whimpering outside stopped. They heard footsteps and then a door somewhere far away closing. Varric grabbed a bottle then sat heavily at the table, uncorking it. “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I’m not getting out there until I’m sloshed.”

“I can’t drink,” Aveline said, wiping tears with the back of her hand.

“I don’t envy you,” Varric shuddered, gulping half the bottle down on one swig.

 

* * *

 

 

Varric took a final swing of his ale, and regarded the crowd with a tinkle of amusement in his eyes at the enthralled look the young lads were giving him.

“So, no shit, there I was,” he leaned in for dramatic effect, "when Hawke turned around, covered in dragon blood from head to toe, and said"–a small pause for dramatic effect- “Shit, Varric, that was one big lizard.”

Laughter echoed all around, and Varric smiled; his smile was still bittersweet, as he couldn’t forget Hawke’s last moments, or the traadegy they had been forced to endure that night. He caught sight of Aveline behind the crowd, and nodded politely to his listeners that were already demanding another story.

Tight-lipped now, he followed Aveline to a dark corner, then regarded her with tension making his shoulders stiff.

“Is it done?” he just asked.

Aveline sighed, looking tired, then rubbed her hand against her stomach. “It is done.”

“Was it quick?”

“Yes.” Aveline winced a little. “Quick. Merciless.”

“Fuck it, they should have made him suffer.”

The Guard Captain looked away. “He…he was broken. Lost. Not even the Templars could bring themselves to…Leave it be Varric. He’s dead.”

Varric looked away too. “Fenris is gone.”

“I know.”

“Sebastian left for Starkhaven today, too.”

Aveline’s face cracked with a small smile. “Good for him.”

“Merrill is going back to her clan. She threw the mirror away.”

“Oh?” Aveline raised an eyebrow. “Fancy that.”

Varric’s lips quirked in a small, dejected smile that was a little bit sarcastic and a little bit tender at the same time.  “Only you and me left, now, Big Red.”

Aveline got that dreamy look that expectant mothers often get, as she lay her hand protectively on the tiny bulge of her abdomen.

“And little Marian.”

Varric’s eyes softened. “Aye. And little Marian, too.” Then he shot a thoughtful look to Aveline. “What if it’s a boy?”

“Little Fenris.”

A bright smile lit Varric’s face for the first time since that tragic night, when they had finally emerged from his room to find a dead body covered respectfully with a blanket in the hall outside his suite. They had learned what Anders had done later, when the Templars had arrived; three women had died in his hands so that he could recreate what in his broken mind resembled Hawke. He still cringed to think what unimaginable torment the blond mage had subjected the soul of his lost friend to summon her form the other side. He still cringed to remember that hair-raising howl from Fenris.

The smile grew larger now on his face, even though his heart was still heavy with loss and bitterness. Life, that ungrateful bitch, went on. Aveline’s baby was proof enough.

“Perfect,” he sighed, also laying a hand on Aveline’s belly. “Just perfect. Little Hawke or Little Fenris.”

He looked away, choked with tears.

“Perfect,” he said again.

A voice called him back to the table, reminding him he had promised to tell the story of how Hawke had met Flemeth, and he smiled ruefully at Aveline before going.

“You take good care of little Marian, or little Fenris, now, Big Red,” he winked. “And I’ll go make their namesakes into legends.”

 

The end

 

                                                     

 

 


End file.
